Everybody knows that he's within his rights to fire them. It just throws cold water on all his grandstanding about being a "free speech absolutist".
EDIT: Everyone telling me that company employees are different from Twitter are missing the point. We know that. But he clearly doesn't care about free speech "absolutely" when he throws a fit that his employees are criticizing him.
So free speech absolutist means you tolerate incoherent yelling in all places at all times? While you're trying to focus and get work done? While you're trying to sleep? At your wedding? At a funeral?
I'd love to hear Mr. Musk define what he means by the term. I'm not the one claiming to be a free speech absolutist, he is.
I for instance am not a free speech absolutist. I think it's okay to deplatform people who are spreading misinformation about a global pandemic, or an election. But Mr. Musk apparently thinks that's bad.
So, we get to find out where he draws the line that he claims he doesn't have.
In the context of the current debate, I think a good faith reading of someone claiming to be a 'free speech absolutist' would be to interpret the internet as a public forum that is protected by speech guarantees enshrined by the first amendment despite the fact that they're hosted by private corporations. It probably doesn't mean child porn is okay. It probably doesn't mean direct exhortations of violence against specific individuals is okay. It's fair to say he can be more explicit in his definition, but it's easier for us to have a conversation if we try to interpret one another charitably.
The real test for whether or not Musk is being a hypocrite is whether or not he censors critics of him on Twitter. That is an apples to apples comparison. I think it's fair to say that continuing to pay people who criticize you is a different matter.
Being the richest man on earth does not absolve you of being called out for being a hypocritical douche?
I never understand this defense.
There are lessons one can take from successful people, but they not demigods. They're just people and people are often good and bad at the same time. Why do people defend them? If I make a controversial statement in a public forum, I should expect some uncomfortable criticism and they aren't entitled to any better treatment just because they can throw a wad of cash around.
Nice straw man you've got there. These employees weren't "incoherently yelling in all places at all times". They distributed a memo which criticized Elon. This should be very acceptable behaviour to a free speech absolutist like Musk.
> Shotwell's email to staff also said, "Blanketing thousands of people across the company with repeated unsolicited emails and asking them to sign letters and fill out unsponsored surveys during the work day is not acceptable."
Unsolicited blasting of the email, letter, and surveys to thousands of employees is the digital equivalent to "incoherently yelling in all places at all times."
I would expect nothing less from the woke-cancer employees. The productive members of the team must be relieved that the woke weight was shed.
It's telling that Musk's defenders have to stand up a hyperbolic caricature of the employee letter ("incoherent yelling at a wedding" in this case), rather than engage with what actually happened. This shows me that it's clear, even to his defenders, that firing employees for a letter criticizing Elon is an obvious contradiction to the spirit of his free speech moralizing, despite him being within his rights to fire them.
1. not under the control or in the power of another; able to act or be done as one wishes.
hmm I wonder what 'free speech absolutist' means. maybe that one's freedom to speak is not qualified or diminished in any way? their freedom to speak is total?
Isn't this just "Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences"? No one is restricting their ability to speak, they are just restricting their ability to work at SpaceX.
What's the alternative? Does a free speech absolutist need to never make judgements on what he hears from someone's free speech? If I hear a person say he wants to murder me and my family, do I still need to invite him over for Thanksgiving dinner? Aren't I exerting some form of control of over him if I say you can't come into my home?
I think your view of the term "free speech absolutist" may make sense when analyzing the individual word meanings, but doesn't make sense as a phrase, and doesn't align with how self described free speech absolutists view themselves.
The point is that there’s no fundamental difference between “you are free to say what you want, but you might get fired from SpaceX” and “you are free to say what you want, but you might get banned from Twitter”. But people — including Elon! — act as if the former is normal and rational, while the latter is some sort of affront to a free society.
Abstractly, in the sense that "freedom from speech is not freedom from consequences", I don't think they're fundamentally different. If you're a free speech absolutist, then the nature of the relationship shouldn't matter. They're both just private organizations making choices about how they voluntarily associate with others.
Most people aren't free speech absolutists, though, and I agree that they'd think there's a fundamental difference between employer-employee relationships and user-provider relationships as a whole. But it should be significantly harder for an employer to fire an employee than for a service provider to ban a user.
Not disagreeing with you, but elaborating on this 'you can say what you want, but you have to live with the consequences' idea.
It's a situation of monopoly. If consequences to speech prohibit one from an entire category of human need (one's life, ability to earn a living, ability to find housing, etc), then those consequences are in fact limiting speech. A 'cancellation' that makes someone unemployable is much more a prohibition on speech than being fired from a single job without affecting one's general ability to get hired. If Musk were to now work to get the signatories of the letter blacklisted from broader employment this becomes an issue.
The problem is that platforms on the internet benefit from network effects and become quasi-monopolistic. If there were platforms with similar reach as Twitter that allowed the speech that Twitter does not allow, whether or not Twitter censors would be kind of a moot point.
Everyone already has what you are describing by default, anyone anywhere can say anything at all, the issue is whatever consequences come from that, be it jail time like in Russia for speaking about the war, or losing your job at SpaceX.
Being a free speech absolutist is meaningless if you are going to fire people the moment they say something you don't like.
I don't think anyone would claim that a place where you have free speech, but you might just get murdered by your government for your free speech, is a place where free speech exists
> Free speech implies a certain amount of freedom from consequences of that speech.
Yes. Like not getting banned from the public square for giving your speech, or not getting arrested by the government for your free speech. No one has ever argued that truly free speech means no one can judge you on what you are saying.
> If you are a free speech absolutist, it would mean believing in no consequences.
It would mean either that, or that you are using the phrase in a different manner than other people who use the phrase.
I find this whole exercise silly. I view it as
1) I don't like someone
2) Someone says he is X
3) To me, X means Y
4) Someone is not a Y
5) Therefore, someone is a hypocrite and (1) is justified.
>It would mean either that, or that you are using the phrase in a different manner than other people who use the phrase.
Words have meaning, if they didn't then there would be no such thing as hypocrisy because everyone could just have their own little definition for a term or title they want to adopt but not be burdened to live by.
To Elon rules apply to thee and not me, these firings are text book hypocrisy.
1) The meaning of a phrase is the same as the meaning of stringing together the individual word definitions of the phrase.
2) There is a universally accepted, obvious definition of a phrase
I think you could reasonably call yourself a free speech absolutist, because you will never kick someone out of the public square for saying their peace, but you are still be allowed to not invite that person to your house for dinner.
>I think you could reasonably call yourself a free speech absolutist, because you will never kick someone out of the public square for saying their peace, but you are still be allowed to not invite that person to your house for dinner.
What you describe is just regular ole free speech.
Then whatever Twitter is/was does not align with "regular ole free speech", based on the people they've banned from their public square (and yes, public squares can be on private property).
There is no comparison between public debate within the letter of the law and what a private company does with insubordinate employees that are disrupting the business.
You don't employ your plumber full time, perennially. Your episodes of petty tyranny probably do not threaten your plumber's livelihood and/or career. Furthermore if your plumber gives you indications on how to avoid damaging your plumbing, it may not be directly related to "fixing the toilet", but he is nonetheless doing his job.
No but if I am paying him $300/hr and what he is doing is not related to fixing the toilet and is in fact causing me more problems or distracting the electrician who is also costing me $300/hr. Getting rid of him is not petty tyranny.
Also I am not threatening his career, he is, he is choosing to take a principled stand and should understand the likely consequences and be willing to accept them.
It was a mistake to participate in this absurd analogy to begin with. You can just stretch it until it becomes convenient again. There is simply no comparing the power dynamic between you and an independent contractor to that of an aerospace company and its highly specialized workforce.
It's a simple fact that SpaceX chose its CEO's public image over its mission statement and reputation. I hope future prospects realize that there is no stability or long-term personal growth to be found there unless they can keep their heads down and kiss ass.
I think the workforce being highly specialized is where this gets tricky. In principle I think firing someone for causing internal strife in someone's judgement as a manager is in accordance to how our economy is structured and is to be expected. We may disagree with the judgement, but it isn't a free speech issue if that person can just go get another job. The 'consequences' to their speech are inconsequential enough that their ability to express themselves is not prohibited even if inconvenient.
But if they can't work anymore because they got fired from the one employer of their skill the consequences are quite severe. They have to learn a new field! Ideally I'd say people with this specialized skill set form a guild or union. The same thing that makes them vulnerable makes their employer vulnerable--the workers of that industry are highly concentrated, with high investment in skill development. Absent that, it's a tricky issue and I think it would be fair to say that at least a warning would have been in order before dismissal.
I don't know if the people Musk fired are in this category or not. If it were an office manager, for example, seems fine. if it is an engineer on some space ship esoterica, ouch.
In theory, if politics starts making SpaceX ineffective, the free market will provide an opening for a competitor with a more effective culture to eat their lunch.
> No but if I am paying him $300/hr and what he is doing is not related to fixing the toilet and is in fact causing me more problems or distracting the electrician who is also costing me $300/hr. Getting rid of him is not petty tyranny.
Perhaps this isn't a good analogy, but if you yelling insults at the the neighbors makes it harder for him to fix the toilet, and he asks you to stop, would you still fire him for it?
Because you could argue, although with difficulty, that Musk tweeting stupid things makes it more difficult for SpaceX employees to do their work.
In practice, I've found it generally easier and wiser to leave a company with a stupid boss rather than ask the stupid boss to change, but I see why someone could try the latter.
It's a funny point. If I were having some argument with the neighbor and the plumber gave me shit about it...to be honest, I'd be super-annoyed and while I wouldn't fire the plumber (it's difficult to get plumbers on site!), I probably wouldn't have him back.
Your point is a good one though, to continue the analogy, the plumber shouldn't want to come back. Erratic and volatile bosses are best avoided. I prefer it when they do this stuff loudly and in public so I can know to avoid them.
There are no indications at all of incompetence (I assume that is what you meant) or laziness in this at all. All indications are that this is an group of employees who came together to complain internally, the complaint was leaked (no indication that it was them), and they were fired.
100% of my company likes me but that's besides the point. Work isn't a popularity contest and you don't need to be liked all the time by everyone. The only people who care about such things are those with devastatingly low self-esteem.
Well, if work isn't a popularity contest, then who gives a damn what you imagine people at SpaceX think of "woke pests"? All it does it make you sound angry.
About 1/6 of the pay comes from his pocket, since he owns about that much of the company.
> He may be founder & CEO. But he is an employee as much as those five.
His main relationship to Tesla is as it's controlling owner, not an employee, though, yes, he's also an employee. That's pretty different from every other employee.
Sorry, pls explain me this business logic. 1/6th is his ownership which is mostly tied to stocks. The pay comes from liquidity(arising from sales, selling bonds & any additional stock dilution from the organization) Unless I am completely misinformed about how business accounting works. Ownership doesnt pay unless they sell their stocks to pay(which he did through raising funding through stock hypothication in the past)
Right. Now that most of us in public know how he thinks & acts, we still believe that the president of the company took action on her own. Since "union" is being supported by the socialists, employers are crushing any organization attempts, thats all.
Being a free speech absolutist has nothing to do with consequences from invoking your free speech. Everyone wanting free speech despite what type of speech that they legally allow is the price we pay to have it. Invoking it and using ignorant, racist or hatefull language doesn't mean you won't pay a social price for it. It just means we won't throw you in jail using the state for it. But you may just lose your jobs. Thems' the breaks.
Exactly, it means we won't throw you in jail using the state. But Musk argues otherwise, that Twitter must let people use their platform to say whatever they want. And at the same time, people working for him cannot say whatever they want about his company.
You're twisting things a bit. He views Twitter as a virtual extension of the real life town square. Namely that the government/Twitter can't remove you from that real/virtual town square for what you say.
SpaceX isn't, nor will it ever be, a town square so the rules don't extend there. (Nor do they extend to Twitter the corporation itself.)
This is highly deceptive. Musk is on record saying that for a town square, you should be able to say whatever you want so long as it is within the letter of the law. Which means, gone will be the days of getting perma-banned for offending some woke crybaby.
Musk's companies are not town squares. They are private entities and employees can be fired for insubordination, harassment, or abuse of company resources.
"It just means we won't throw you in jail using the state for it. But you may just lose your jobs. Thems' the breaks."
This is a misrepresentation of the current "debate" taking place regarding free speech, a debate we have frequently on Hacker News. Nobody is threatened with jail for saying anything in the US, so if that was the primary bone of contention, the debate wouldn't exist. It's more about cancel culture, etc.
Deciding not to associate with you or provide you with a platform for saying what you want has nothing to do with your ability to say it. Enjoy Substack.
I think you say that with some amount of snark, but both sides of the argument agree with this. It isn't controversial to say twitter isn't legally or socially obligated to give you a platform to practice free speech.
The fact Musk wants to turn it into a platform for free speech doesn't imply that he believes twitter has that burden of responsibility, only that he thinks it would be a good thing if they took on that responsibility.
It's also not hypocritical for Musk to say twitter would be a good platform to take on the responsibility of free speech while also saying workplace communication is not a good platform to take on the responsibility of free speech.
Now whether you or I agree with his stance on either of these points is another subject entirely, but it is not hypocrisy as other comments seem to be suggesting.
If the employees had posted on twitter instead, he totally still would have fired them. Musk just wants to be able to speak without consequences, while he’s perfectly happy to impose consequences on speech by his employees
and it still wouldn't be hyprocritical - free speech has nothing to do with being able to say anything somewhere and avoid consequences. It only has to do with protecting your ability to say those things.
If you call your friend mean things on twitter and your friend decides to stop talking to you, freedom of speech has not been violated.
“Consequences for thee, not for me” feels pretty hypocritical. In this case Musk wants the consequences for speech be limited to things (like being fired) that he doesn’t have to worry about because he is rich.
If you're an employee at spacex and Musk uses internal communications to say something you don't like, you can leave spacex, which would be a consequence for musk's actions. So your point doesn't hold. He is not immune from the consequences of his speech in the exact same scenario.
A job is little more than a business relationship where a person agrees to do labor in exchange for money. Either side of that relationship has the ability to terminate that relationship as a consequence of speech they might not like.
The better approach is to form a union, in order to address the colossal power imbalance between SpaceX's executive committee and the people who do the actual work. It's likely you'll get fired for that as well, but it's better than leaving in "protest". Elon Musk probably spends 50x more time thinking about his hair plugs than he does about engineers departing his companies.
Either way, to act like this "business relationship" is perfectly reciprocal is either naive or malintentioned.
I agree, unionization at face value seems to be a great tool to empower workers. As for reciprocity I don't think anyone is suggesting it's perfectly balanced. If you're using that phrasing as a device to suggest it's extremely unbalanced then I would wonder what data you're using to come to that conclusion. It is, after all an entirely voluntary relationship being formed in a country with no shortage of jobs.
Nobody has argued that Twitter cannot ban people from their platform at will because of what they say. The argument has always been that it's a bad idea for them to do so for a whole variety of reasons:
1. The inevitable inconsistency in application creates hypocrisy, which makes people upset.
2. It attracts political attention if/when the enforcement is politically biased.
3. It costs large sums of money that could be spent on other things.
4. It isn't actually necessary.
5. Public forums in which ideas can duke it out are essential for a healthy democratic society. Someone needs to run them, so if you decide to create an explicitly public forum open to everyone then you have a moral duty to protect and implement free speech policies
etc etc. Not an exhaustive list by any means, just a subset of the arguments that can be mounted.
But note that none of these apply to the case of employees criticizing their employer.
It actually does, if you own the single dominant platform in the space where the conversations are happening.
Speech isn't just about the act of saying, but also being able to be heard. Anyone can whisper to themselves in bed, but that is not speech in the political sense. Being able to speak where nobody hears is doesn't mean you have free speech.
Lots of people can hear you on Substack, Gab, etc. Accept that other people will practice their right not to associate with you. If so many of you aren't going to admit someone else's right not to be fired for trivialities then I do not want to hear about this right to be heard crap either.
To be fair though, Elon is in no way a "free speech absolutist", he just plays one on Twitter because he wants to freely manipulate the market to line his pockets, but still won't tolerate people critical of him.
"Free speech absolutist" doesn't mean "freedom from consequences outside the town square (either literal or virtual)". It just means you won't be forcibly removed from the town square. Just like you can go walk in your Nazi parades in the US, it doesn't mean you won't get fired from your job if people see you in that parade, but you can still keep doing your parades.
What are your actual principles there? Does it also apply to freedom to be openly gay? Walk in your pride parades but get fired from your job as a consequence? I don't think you're using any general principles, just picking argument salad to fit your belief.
He never claimed SpaceX is a town square. You're conflating this with his description of Twitter as a de-facto town square where speech shouldn't be policed as harshly and silently as it is now.
Being fired was a consequence of their free speech.
Musk has only ever said he believes people should have absolute freedom of speech; he hasn't said people shouldn't face consequences for what they say.
So he's in favor of "cancel culture"? It's hard to keep up.
Edit: Isn't getting kicked off twitter simply a consequence of saying something that's against twitter's TOS? What definition of free speech is Musk using?
Musk is using the definition of free speech where people you agree with face no consequences for speech, and people you disagree with suffer arbitrarily. That is always the definition powerful people use when they say “free speech.”
Edit: Isn't getting kicked off twitter simply a consequence of saying something that's against twitter's TOS? What definition of free speech is Musk using?
Being banned from Twitter is a consequence of your speech, but it's also restricting your freedom to speak. I imagine Musk feels that not restricting people's freedom of speech is more important than the consequence of banning them.
That doesn't mean he thinks there should be no consequences for speaking. Just that the consequences shouldn't limit your freedom to speak.
In this case, people fired from SpaceX are still free to speak out about Musk's brand and its influence on SpaceX. Their speech has not been restricted.
> In this case, people fired from SpaceX are still free to speak out about Musk's brand and its influence on SpaceX. Their speech has not been restricted.
The people banned from Twitter are still free to speak about whatever as well. Frankly I think SpaceX's actions limit speech more than a Twitter ban. Ex-Twitter users just have to find a new platform, at their convenience. Fired employees have just had there livelihood taken away and have to drop everything and find something new before their savings run out.
To be clear I think SpaceX was well within it's rights to fire these people, but as consequences go I see firing as far more consequential than a Twitter ban.
Their speech is less likely to be publicised/reported on though, so they have arguably lost some potential audience. In the same way that being banned from Twitter does not restrict your freedom to speak (e.g. you can go to another website, setup your own or stand on a street corner irl), but it does reduce your potential audience
This makes no sense. People who are banned from Twitter are still able to speak, just not on Twitter. (Or at least, not on Twitter using that particular account)
People who are fired from SpaceX have absolutely no access to the SpaceX communication channels they were fired for exercising the wrong kind of speech on.
Cancel culture is not strictly being cancel for your actions. It is unjustly cancelling somebody. If you hired a baby sitter who said they wanted to kill your child (even if it was a joke) it wouldn't be unjust to fire that person. Nobody would argue that was cancel culture.
Obviously, I am not saying what these employees are saying is equivalent, but cancelling somebody for what they say is not always cancel culture.
That's non sense, or then everyone has absolute freedom of speech, you just have to open your mouth or type a text.
What limits freedom of speech _are_ the "consequences". It either is "absolute" in which case there are no consequences, or limited, in which case there are consequences (but then by definition it isn't absolute anymore)
If you fire someone for their opinion about their employer, or jail them for their opinion about the president, you can't be for "absolute" freedom of speech.
It's like saying "you're free to murder people, but if you do you'll go to jail".
I think you can make a difference between types of consequences.
In a strictly legal sense, you can be allowed to call your neighbor ugly. There will be no legal consequences, because of a law/constitutional amendment protecting free speech.
On a personal level, however, your neighbor might not like being called ugly, and retaliate by avoiding you or insulting you back. This is a consequence, but not a legal one.
I think, Musk view is that expression on Twitter should play a "legal guardian" type role in moderating content on the site, as opposed to say blocking negative content (and you could argue that as a site that makes money selling ads, blocking negative content could be the smart play, similar to the NYT not hiring idiots to write for them), but that the SpaceX employees, when fired by their employer, are facing consequences not on a legal but a personal level.
Of course, there's a very good chance this is just backwards rationalizing the erratic, irrational behavior of a emotionally unstable person.
The goal of the employees was to silence his free speech. Disrupting those censorious efforts by firing them is his dealing with Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance. He realized that to preserve a tolerant workplace, intolerance of their rising tide of intolerance was necessary.
>Disrupting those censorious efforts by firing them is Popper’s Paradox in action.
No, it isn't. Popper's paradox only applies to the speech of parties which use force, rather than speech, to suppress the free speech of others. It was written in the context of Nazi Germany, and warning about the consequences of what is now called "free speech absolutism," when that freedom is co-opted by authoritarians who don't respect it (in other words, people like Elon Musk.)
Trying to suppress speech with more speech is simply how free speech is supposed to work.
EDIT: Everyone telling me that company employees are different from Twitter are missing the point. We know that. But he clearly doesn't care about free speech "absolutely" when he throws a fit that his employees are criticizing him.